


A throwback to forever

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Female Friendship, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Darcy Brunhilde Falsworth-Lewis, born the thirteenth of December, nineteen-eighty-eight, has a great life.If only her born-in-the-First-World-War soulmate wasn't almost definitelydead,since she can't seem to find him anywhere.





	A throwback to forever

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly a Darcy centric fic, but if (when) I write a follow up, it will be All Starcy All The Time.
> 
> Enjoy!

So, sure, it’s weird.

It’s  _ super  _ weird. Darcy’s had a lifetime to get used to it and it  _ still  _ weirds her out like nobody’s business. She keeps it covered up with wristbands and cool leather cuffs and chunky bracelets, and she doesn’t need to think about it very much. At all. Ever.

Gramps thinks she’s a big ol’ hunk of chickenshit for that, of course, but he always has that one smile when he calls her on it. He keeps that smile in reserve for when he has his hipflask hidden down the side of his wheelchair but he’s promising Grandma that he hasn’t touched a single drop of whiskey all week, or when the doctor is making him swear to actually stick to his diet this time but he has a bag of candy hidden under his cardigan. 

His newest doctor - young, female, completely bowled over by his accent and his old beret, which he still wears  _ all the damn time _ \- believes him every time, but Grandma never does.

She just lets him away with it. He says that’s what soulmates are  _ for,  _ but Darcy wouldn’t know, since her soulmate is probably either a geriatric living in a nursing home somewhere, or  _ dead. _

Since he or she was apparently born  _ during the First World War. _

It’s weird. She probably won’t ever get over it. Seeing Gramps and Grandma be so happy and in tune doesn’t help.

 

*

 

She brings Gramps out on the town sometimes, when she’s home from college, and he usually manages to leave his beret at home. 

He does insist on wearing a silk cravat, but hey, he’s English, that’s probably a solid excuse. Grandma always rolls her eyes and tells him he looks like an ass, but she also makes sure his favourites are clean and pressed, and she always tucks the little brass pin she gave him when they were first stepping out together in just right.

“Tell me, poppet,” he says, fluffing out his napkin and laying it just so over his lap, “how was New Mexico?”

Well. Can she-? He’s ex-SHIELD, so probably, right? Aunt Peggy probably heard all about it, so it’s  _ almost definitely  _ okay for Darcy to tell Gramps every little detail, since there’s a Howlies’ reunion coming up next month and Peggy always shares the dirtiest details with the boys. Like, the  _ dirtiest.  _ So dirty that Darcy wishes she wouldn’t, especially since Gramps loves sharing every story with her and Grandma, much to Grandma’s amusement and Darcy’s eternal consternation.

“If any of them try anything,” Gramps says, cheerful as he only gets when he’s got more than one gun hidden in his chair, “I’ll kneecap them, how’s that?”

Darcy smiles, sets down her menu - it’s not as though they ever order anything but the chowder and then the steak, medium rare with extra onions for him and sauerkraut for her - and leans forward, hands flat on the table as a signal for him to shut the fuck up, because this is a  _ good story. _

“Okay, so,” she says, “it was all going super boring, just like I told you and Grandma, and then there was this crazy storm, right?”

 

*

 

Darcy never used to worry about her soulmark.

Everyone has one, sure, and they’re so specific that there’s pretty much never any confusion. Gramps has Grandma’s birthday on his right wrist, Grandma has his on her left wrist. Her friend Montana from grade school has her little sister’s, and Alice who shared her dorm room in freshman year had her mom’s. They can be platonic or romantic or anything in between, but everyone  _ has _ one.

Darcy’s is kind of useless. Usually, when there’s a huge age gap, it means that the partners are grandparent and grandchild - closer than normal, nothing hinky. Until she was old enough to actually understand dates, instead of just overhearing the whispers about  _ so old,  _ she kind of assumed that Gramps was her soulmate. Like, sure, she had Grandma’s hair and nose and face and smart mouth, but she and Gramps were on the same wavelength about pretty much everything.

She’d been doubly sure, after her mom and dad died in the crash, so sure that on the night after their funeral, five years old and terrified, because the only people she had left in the world were Mom’s parents, who lived way out in a small town near Albany instead of in  _ the city,  _ she’d asked Grandma if she minded having to share Gramps.

“Oh, honey,” Grandma had sighed, “that’s not your gramps’ birthday.”

That’d nearly been harder than losing her folks, because she hadn’t really understood that Mom and Dad weren’t coming back from the conference in Vermont, but she  _ did _ understand what it meant that this wasn’t Gramps’ birthday.

She mostly doesn’t mind, though. Sure, it broke her little four year old heart to realise that the person destined to be her best friend  _ wasn’t _ her cool-as-shit grandfather, who’d been shot not once but  _ six times _ , once in the ass, and who’d been a goddamn  _ Howling Commando,  _ and it kind of breaks her heart that even if she  _ does  _ find her nearly-centenarian soulmate now, she won’t have long with them.

But she mostly doesn’t mind. 

Mostly.

 

*

 

“So here’s the thing, Janey-o,” she says, perching on Jane’s desk, because hiding her research is sometimes the only way to actually get Jane’s attention. “This whole thing with Thor. How much of a thing is it?”

“We boned,” Jane says, lifting a second binder off the other side of the desk and opening it in Darcy’s lap. “Like. Mega boned. I did not know my vagina was capable of that kind of amazingness.”

“And?”

“And?” Jane echoes, shrugging. “Is this a soulmate thing? Because, you know, my soulmate is dead and I don’t want another one, Darce.”

Jane’s soulmate, her dead-in-a-failed-fighter-jet-test-flight twin David, is a bizarrely not touchy subject. Darcy’s never known anyone who lost a sibling, never mind a  _ soulmate,  _ who could talk about it as easily as Jane talks about David.

“It’s not a soulmate thing,” Darcy promises. “Well, not really. It’s more a, can you form that kind of connection with someone who  _ isn’t  _ your soulmate, you know?”

“You  _ have  _ that kind of connection,” Jane points out. “With your grandfather, Darcy. The two of you are totally in sync. That’s what me and David were like. It’s not the huge deal people make it out to be. It’s just that you  _ get  _ one another, you know?”

Yeah, Darcy does know, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to find the one person who’s going to  _ get  _ her better than anyone else ever has or ever will. 

“Never mind,” she says, sliding off the desk and replacing the original binder on top of the second. “Want to grab lunch? Erik’s back in town. We can go for sushi.”

“Erik hates sushi, Darcy.”

_ “Exactly.” _

 

*

 

So, here’s the thing.

There’s not a whole lot you can do with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in Economics, unless SHIELD thinks you’re a potential leak.

When SHIELD thinks you’re a potential leak, but are also kind of terrified of your grandparents, they hook you up with a sweet-ass scholarship to get a  _ Master _ of Arts in Political Science and an even sweeter-ass internship under no less a world power than  _ Pepper fucking Potts. _

“Oh my,” Gramps says, when Darcy breaks the news to him and Grandma. “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”

Grandma just sighs dreamily, the way she sometimes does about Aunt Peggy when they’re reminiscing about SHIELD’s earliest days. Grandma is also totally swoon-worthy, a former professor of economics in Barnard and the source of Darcy’s pin-uppable bod, but there’s something about Peggy Carter that would make even the most repressed weirdo in the world sigh dreamily, so Darcy gets it.

“She’s  _ hot as fuck, _ ” Darcy agrees, “but that isn’t the point. The point is, I don’t  _ need  _ this scholarship, I’ve got my trust fund, so is it a selfish and generally bogus move to take it when there  _ are  _ people who need scholarship funds?”

“Well, poppet,” Gramps says, shrugging while lighting one of his narrow cigars and sticking his tongue out at Grandma when she coughs pointedly. “I don’t think people who are in need of scholarships are actually eligible for a SHIELD-funded scholarship.”

“And,” Grandma points out, looking over the contract that was couriered to Darcy right before she left Culver to come home for a few days - since she’s basically idle rich right now, she’s shuttling back and forth between Culver and Albany every few weeks, skivvying for Jane for coffee and keeping Gramps out from under Grandma’s feet for coffee  _ cake -  _ “I don’t think you’ll be able to intern with Miss Potts unless you take this offer. The two seem to go hand in hand, honey.”

“That is  _ super unfair, _ ” Darcy says. “Do you think I could buy her new shoes and convince her to take me on sans SHIELD?”

“If Pepper Potts needs someone else to buy her shoes, I’m a mongoose,” Grandma says. “Suck it up, kiddo. I’m sorry to tell you that you have to endure someone sponsoring you to do a degree you’re going to absolutely love  _ and _ sponsoring you through an internship that has you pretty much drooling all over my table.”

 

*

 

Darcy hasn’t actually been in Manhattan since her parents died.

She… It’s not that she’s gone out of her way to avoid it. But, well, that’s  _ exactly  _ it. Her friends in school always thought it was weird, because who  _ wouldn’t  _ want to show off that they’d lived on the Upper West Side, but once she’d gotten old enough to think about it, well.  _ Well.  _

Manhattan always makes her think of her mom. Darcy got over her dad’s death - he was always away for work, so she doesn’t feel as if she  _ knew _ him, and she feels kind of guilty over not missing him, sometimes - but her mom was her whole world for her whole life, until the accident. It’s hard not to come here and think  _ I wonder if Mom and me would’ve done this,  _ or  _ I wonder if Mom ever wanted to bring me there,  _ or a thousand other questions.

So basically, being back in Manhattan full-time  _ kind of fucking sucks,  _ but there are perks. God, there are perks.

Perk Number One: her masters programme is  _ totally amazing. _

Like, she did not expect to like it even half this much. Her lectures are interesting, her independent study parameters don’t limit her so much that they’re frustrating but they also don’t give her so much room that she’s left directionless. Her study group are a riot, and really like mojitos, and honestly the whole thing is just great. It’s so good. Even if Grandma has made a point of sending her, like, a bajillion pieces of Barnard merch, meant to be worn while she’s walking across the Columbia campus.

Perk Number Two: Campus is  _ fucking gorgeous.  _

Perk Number Three: Her internship is  _ the best thing that has ever happened to her. _

Gramps has already written two love letters to Pepper Potts simply because she’s coaxed Darcy into tailoring, something he had failed to do in twenty-odd years of legal guardianship. Grandma routinely tries to Skype while Darcy’s at work, just in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the lady herself. 

Darcy is one of three interns, total, working on the top non-residential floor of the Stark building. One of them is Mr Hogan’s intern. So it’s just her and Jubilee, and Alice the secretary, and Pepper.

Perk Number Four:  _ Pepper. Mother. Fucking. Potts. _

 

*

 

“Hey, Darcy, Jubilee,” Pepper says airily, breezing past them as if it isn’t Ass AM and she hasn’t been up since Asscrack AM on a video call with the head of R&D in SI’s Singapore office. She’s wearing a white pencil skirt, a silver-white silk blouse, and has a killer purple blazer hanging off her shoulders, just perfectly matching her Louboutins. “Good morning so far?”

“Amazeballs, Pep,” Jubilee -  _ Jubilation Lee,  _ jeez, what a name - calls over her shoulder from where she’s hunting out something far, far too specific for Pepper on Tony’s behalf. It had been decided, in the first three days of the internship, that Darcy was to be kept at least a hundred yards from Tony Stark and his  _ requests  _ for fear that she might rip his balls off and shove them down his throat in sheer annoyance, and so Jubilee, who finds him  _ hilarious,  _ is stuck with them.

Darcy has stopped asking what Tony’s  _ requests  _ are. It’s safer for all of them, according to Mr Hogan, who smiles when she calls him  _ Mr Hogan  _ instead of  _ Happy. _

Jubes calls Happy  _ Cuddles,  _ which makes Tony absolutely holler when he overhears, and makes Aunt Peggy  _ hoot _ when Darcy tells her over Skype, something she only does when she feels bad about laughing. Peggy surreptitiously handpicked Mr H as Tony’s bodyguard, because she somehow saw Tony’s idiocy and decided that Happy’s pedantic and sometimes alarming  _ Happy-ness _ was the perfect counterweight. 

She was right, because Aunt Peggy is  _ always _ right.

“I’ve had worse,” Darcy says over the top of her computer screen - StarkTech, of course, because even Darcy will grudgingly admit that they’re the best - without looking away from her data streams. These ones are comparisons of SI stock prices with those of their primary competitors across five fields, and while in  _ theory  _ it’s nothing Darcy’s used to, it’s not really all that different from collating Jane’s crazy space science.

And Grandma, bless her vicious little heart, had not-very-gently nudged Darcy into weighting her minor so heavily with Economics classes that she’d been left with something like a difference of five credits between Econ and PoliSci. She has this shit  _ locked down. _

Tony walks in the door, obviously wanting to harass Pepper about something, and Darcy presses the floor button Mr H installed. Tony freezes on the spot, locked into some kind of electromagnetic field that seems  _ way  _ more effective than Darcy thinks it should be, which gives Darcy just enough time to buzz Mr H so he can come collect his wayward charge.

Jubilee has a floor button that somehow magnetizes the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that form the back wall of Pepper’s office, for use when Tony is Iron Manning it up and decides to swing by from the sky. It is the best, most beautiful thing Darcy has ever seen, especially since no intern or PA of Pepper’s has ever had the moxy to use it before, and so he has been stuck to the window no less that six times in the six months since Darcy and Jubilee moved in.

“Tell Pepper I’ll be back to bring her for lunch once I finish taking out the trash,” Mr H says, heaving Tony over his shoulder with a long-suffering sigh. “He has to be brought all the way out to Queens for something, and with this traffic?”

“Disgusting,” Darcy agrees. “Happy driving, Mr Hogan.”

“Is it ever?” Mr H asks, eyes rolling skyward even as he smiles. 

“He’s going to adopt you,” Jubes says, “trust me, I’ve been adopted, I know the signs.”

Jubilee’s adoptive father is a huge beefy guy with the sickest sideburns Darcy’s ever seen, based on Jubes’ Facebook page. Apparently he’s a pussycat. Darcy is not convinced, literally at all, and so doubts Jubilee’s judgement on basically everything.

“Did Phil call back about lunch?” Pepper asks, poking her head around the frosted glass door instead of using the intercom system, like she always does, because apparently she’s still not used to sitting in the big office. “Because I really, really need tacos for lunch, and no one else will go for tacos with me.”

No one will go for tacos with Pepper because they’re all big babies who can’t handle their spice like she can, except Agent Phil Coulson, who apologised for treating Darcy as an Unknown when she’s apparently always been a Known, thanks to Gramps. Darcy kinda likes the shifty little weirdo, truth be told, even if he does get a bit starry-eyed whenever he catches sight of the photo she has of herself at Disneyworld with Gramps and Grandma from last summer. He’s a Cap groupie, apparently, which is almost cute in a suit.

“He’ll be here for one, which means twelve thirty,” Darcy promises. “Happy’ll drive you to that weird place you like in Hell’s Kitchen, where that Julliard girl is always crying.”

Pepper  _ loves _ people watching, and gushes about the people she watches while doling out her leftovers - which are always plentiful, because she orders enough for three on purpose. There’s this one hole-in-the-wall Mexican place that she  _ loves _ because there are these two girls who always sit at the same table and apparently have  _ all the drama,  _ and also because the tacos there are to die for.

Pepper always brings back enchiladas for Darcy and Jubilee when she goes to the Dramatic Mexican Place, because the tacos are just too much.  _ Pepper. Mother. Fucking. Potts. _

 

*

 

“So,” Jane says, sitting on the steps of the Met with just, the biggest pot of froyo Darcy has ever seen in her lap. There’s a punnet of blueberries beside her, and Darcy knows for a fact that she has one of those big fuck-off water bottles in her bag, presumably full of some kind of ungodly iced coffee. “Any news on the geriatric best friend score?”

Darcy rolls her eyes and pointedly doesn’t tug at the new leather-and-silk cuff on her right wrist. 

“Yes, Jane,” she says. “I found him. He’s a total stud. We’re getting married next December.”

“For your birthday? How  _ cute!” _

 

*

 

So here’s the thing.

Her masters is  _ maybe  _ the hardest thing she’s ever done, but it’s totally worth it when she walks across the stage to accept her diploma and can see Gramps and Grandma crying in the front row. Pepper and Mr H are sitting beside them, and Pepper looks  _ kind  _ of overwhelmed, because:

“Emeline Falsworth is your grandmother? Can I meet her? I’m a  _ huge _ fan.”

That had made Grandma’s  _ year,  _ and now she and Pepper are best friends or something. Darcy’s not sure, and she and Gramps have agreed that they’re better off  _ not  _ knowing. 

It means a lot, though, Pepper and Mr H turning up. Darcy has her suspicions that Jubes - who disappeared back to her fancy-ass super-private college in Westchester halfway through their internship, apparently with Pepper’s blessing - was right when she said that Happy would have adopted Darcy, but, like, he’s a genuinely good dude so she doesn’t even mind. Pepper continues to be the queen of the entire world, and is also one of the funniest people Darcy knows, when she’s not stressed to the max.

She also gives the best graduation presents. Example:  _ a fucking job offer. _

“I did not expect this,” Darcy admits over banana splits with Gramps and Grandma and Jane the day after Pepper presents her with a huge brown envelope stuffed with contracts. “I mean, I kind of assumed the men in black would find some weirdo job to keep me on the DL, but this is not the DL. This is the HU.”

“High up?” Grandma guesses, to Darcy’s delight. “Honey, listen to me: if you don’t want to work for Virginia Potts,  _ I will take the job.” _

“Please take the job, poppet,” Gramps says, pulling a face across the table at Grandma but covering Darcy’s hand with his and squeezing tight. “I couldn’t live without your grandmother’s cooking.”

Gramps couldn’t live without Grandma, period, and Darcy rolls her eyes just for the look of the thing.

“I mean, my alternative job offer is from Jane,” Darcy points out, receiving Jane’s proffered high five with good grace. “And while I enjoyed my time as Chief Flunky, well, Pepper’s offering me  _ dental. _ ”

Darcy has had a  _ thing _ about her teeth since she was a kid and was denied the right to get fun, coloured braces - she hadn’t been too cut up about it once Grandma explained just what braces actually  _ did,  _ but the initial outrage had left her particular and careful, and that obsession extended into adulthood. No one in the world looks forward to dentist’s appointments the way Darcy Brunhilde Falsworth-Lewis looks forward to dentist’s appointments.

“I could never compete with tooth stuff,” Jane sighs, looking to Grandma for support, and getting it in the form of a deeply condescending pat on the hand. “Or the shoe allowance. I’m assuming there’s a shoe allowance, considering I’ve never seen a photo of Pepper Potts where she isn’t wearing scary shoes.”

“Most of those are gifts from Tony to make up for being a piece of shit jerkass,” Darcy confides, and Gramps mutters something like  _ chip off the old block.  _ It makes Tony twitch every time he remembers just who Darcy  _ means  _ when she says Gramps, because he really, really doesn’t like there to be outside sources on his old man in any conversation ever. “Pepper only buys herself new shoes when Tony forgets to buy her a make up present, and even then she uses his card.”

“Maybe,” Grandma says, breathless with envy, “she’ll spend Tony’s money on shoes for  _ you _ from now on.”

 

*

 

Darcy admires Pepper’s work wardrobe like nobody’s business, but is deeply, deeply relieved when Pepper assures her that there is no need to invest in a series of super-fitted pencil dresses in various shades of pale monochrome.

“So long as you look better than Tony, that’s all I ask,” Pepper says, so Darcy continues with her fantastic, Grandma-and-Aunt-Peggy influenced vintage wardrobe, most of which comes in navy-and-jewel-tones. 

It is disgustingly easy to look better than Tony. Darcy makes friends with Tony’s AI butler just so JARVIS is willing to text her with Tony’s wardrobe choices for the day so she can  _ kill it _ when he’s looking particularly grungy and gross.

Working with Pepper is not a dream - it’s fucking hard, like, the hours are long and irregular and the work is  _ exhausting,  _ partly because SI is, you know, Stark fucking Industries, and partly because Darcy is Pepper’s liaison with PR, and PR is always having a nightmare over something Tony has said or done.

Darcy wants to borrow a pair of Pepper’s Louboutins just once. She wants to drive the heels into Tony’s  _ fucking  _ eyeballs, in the hopes that it might stop him calling out the highest-ranking general in the US Army as a bigoted old coot who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Even if it’s  _ true,  _ Thunderbolt Ross has too many connections for even Tony to escape that shit unscathed.

On the bright side, Tony’s attack on General Thaddeus Ross brings Ross’ daughter to the Tower, and Darcy falls in love.

Doctor Ross - well, Darcy remembers her a little from Culver. She was Bio to Jane’s Phys, but their paths crossed every once in a while, and Darcy still goes a little weak a the knees remembering Doctor Ross crossing the quad outside the library in those above the knee boots and tight, tight jeans with a big old knitted sweater. She’s maybe the most beautiful woman in the world, and she’s also maybe the  _ smartest,  _ in her field at least.

She walks into Darcy’s office, which is between Pepper’s and Alice the secretary’s, and sits down in the overstuffed box chairs the colour of a caramel latte with a smile. She’s wearing a black skirt suit and plain black pumps, with her hair scraped back in a bun, and Darcy gets a little starry eyed.

“Hey,” Doctor Elizabeth Ross says. “You’re Jane’s Darcy, right? It’s great to meet you - Betty Ross.”

Yup. Definitely in love.

 

*

 

So.  _ The Avengers Initiative.  _

Darcy finds the whole concept absolutely hilarious, and tells everyone so while trying very hard not to snort margarita out her nose.

“Listen,” she says, holding up a hand to forestall Tony’s outrage, “listen, Tony, you’re a great kid and Iron Man is good at what he does, but what he does is not  _ buddy-systeming  _ keeping the peace, you know?”

Somehow, this is Darcy’s life now. After work drinks with Pepper and Mr H -  _ please, Darcy, we’re out of the office, call me Happy _ . Gatecrashed by Tony and  _ James fucking Rhodes.  _

Darcy is a woman of simple tastes. She enjoys ogling really attractive people. James Rhodes -  _ nice to meet you, call me Rhodey, everyone does -  _ is insanely attractive, and also charming to a degree Darcy has never experienced firsthand. She’s only ever heard stories of men being this genuinely kind and funny and  _ engaging,  _ and she feels kind of overwhelmed, in a really good way.

She still texts Jane to come along, just to dilute how  _ hot _ Rhodey is, and also Pepper, since they are out of the office and Darcy is on her third margarita.

“I’m with the kid,” Rhodey says, louche and easy and  _ hot _ sprawled back in the corner of the booth, bottle of weird craft beer  _ dripping  _ from his long fingers, and can Jane please hurry up before Darcy embarrasses herself? “The idea of you playing with anyone else is dumb as all get out, Tony.”

“I play well with you!” Tony protests. “We’ve proved it! We saved the day!”

“Tony,” Rhodey says patiently. “I’m your  _ soulmate.  _ If you couldn’t work well with me, I may as well shoot you in the face.”

It had taken Darcy by surprise to find that Pepper and Tony weren’t soulmates, but looking at them now, it makes sense. Tony and Rhodey function on the same level of like, barely-contained crazy, whereas Pepper and  _ her _ soulmate (Happy. Of course it’s Happy. Who else could it possibly be.) are both efficient, eternally patient, endlessly kind, and somehow able to handle all the shit Tony throws at them with the kind of grace Darcy knows she should emulate.

“I don’t have a soulmate,” she says, to break the tension she can see rising in Tony’s tight shoulders and Pepper’s tired half-frown. “Or. Like. They’re probably dead.”

All four turn to look at her in surprise, because that’s not the kind of information you just  _ volunteer.  _ Most people don’t talk about their soulmates until they’ve found one another, but Darcy’s never going to find hers, so it’s no big deal. 

Not at all.

Seriously.

“Kiddo,” Tony says, looking so concerned that she  _ immediately  _ regrets this diversionary tactic. “That’s kind of heavy. Are you okay?”

“I mean, they’re like ninety-five or something,” she says, brushing it off, because she  _ has  _ more or less made her peace with it. “So at best they’re in a nursing home.”

“Your grandfather is ninety-eight and he’d shoot anyone who tried to put him in a nursing home,” Happy points out. “Maybe your soulmate is like him.”

“Nah,” Darcy says, tapping her cuff and wondering why she hasn’t done like most people with dead soulmates, and gotten a tattoo over her mark. “If I was going to meet my old-enough-to-be-dead soulmate, it’d be one of Gramps’ buddies. Preferably Aunt Peggy.”

Something soft and misty fills the eyes of everyone at the table but Tony at the mention of Peggy, and they take a moment.

“But I’ve met all of the living ones,” she forges on, “and while they are a great bunch of people, and their wives are even cooler, they are not my soulmate. I know all of their birthdays. I make them cupcakes. Red velvet. Every year.”

Pepper covers Darcy’s hand with hers, and Happy wraps his big arm around her shoulders. She kind of wonders if this is what having parents is like, because, you know, Gramps and Grandma are the best people in the world but she remembers just enough about Jack Lewis and Eudora Falsworth to know that the whole relationship just isn’t the same.

“Anyway!” she says, alarmed by the way her boss, her boss’ soulmate, her boss’ boyfriend, and her boss’ boyfriend’s soulmate are looking at her. Tony looks like he’s going to adopt her, and Happy must think the same because his arm tightens around her. “More drinks? More drinks!”

 

*

 

She has a world-ending hangover the next morning, but still manages to slap on some concealer and see Pepper off on her jet to Malibu or wherever - Alice the secretary, who is nearly sixty and mean as shit unless Darcy remembers her blueberry muffin and triple-shot cappuccino every morning, handles Pepper’s itinerary, so all Darcy has to do is have the briefings from PR and R&D ready to go, in their neatly colour-coded binders. 

She has them. She made sure to do them before going out for too many margaritas and too much sympathy last night. She is going to  _ murder  _ Tony for telling the hot guy behind the bar that drinks were on him, because Tony’s card apparently means  _ all the tequila  _ in her margaritas. All of it. She can barely see straight, and that’s after five times the legal limit of Advil.

Okay, she took one extra. Because she’s not  _ stupid.  _ She’s just  _ dying.  _

With Pepper being away, she has a day off - it’s the turn of her opposite number in Malibu, who seems to run SI CA while Pepper is running SI NY, which terrifies Darcy because what if someday, Pepper wants  _ her _ to run SI NY? She’s too young! And prone to hangovers! 

Deep breaths. Get to Jane’s maybe-SHIELD-maybe-Stark-Industries lab, curl up under a desk, cry. Solid plan. 

 

*

 

Then, sometime after, a hole opens in the sky over Manhattan, and one of Darcy’s potential adoptive fathers flies a nuke into said hole, right as it closes.

She cries. Jane cries. Everybody cries. It is a very emotional few days.

And then Gramps calls.

 

*

 

_ “Please arrange for rooms for all of us in the Four Seasons, poppet, _ ” he says. _ “Put it on your grandmother’s card. We need to come into town.” _

“By “all of us,” you mean…?”

_ “Grandma and I, Pegs and Gabe, Jim and Nadia, Frenchie and Sabine. Dum and Naomi will be meeting us there.” _

Dum Dum and Naomi live in Long Island, and never book into the Four Seasons for the Howlie reunions. Darcy has looked after the bookings for years now, and always finds the extra room tacked on to the account after the fact hilarious, since Dum Dum  _ always _ ends up going a little too hard on the scotch’n’cigars and needing somewhere close at hand to lay his head.

“Is this about-”

_ “We’d all like a stern word with Steven, yes,” _ Gramps says, sounding tense and terse as he never usually does with her.  _ “Please, Darcy, can you do it?” _

“If the Four Seasons is still standing, you’ll have your rooms.”

 

*

 

Gramps is stony-faced when Darcy meets him and Uncle Jim in their favourite French restaurant. Uncle Jim is also stony-faced, but Jim Morita is  _ always _ stony-faced, until he smiles, so that’s less worrisome. 

“So,” she says, “I talked to Pepper, who talked to Tony, who shouted at Director Fury, and I got Captain America’s cell number for you. He apparently does not have a Skype account.”

Uncle Jim gestures for her to take the third seat at the table, and she assumes that Grandma and Aunt Nadia will be along in a minute. There’re only five seats at the table, which means Aunt Peggy and Uncle Gabe aren’t here yet, or Uncle Duck and Aunt Sabine, or even Dum Dum and Aunt Naomi. 

“So,” Gramps says, waving over a waiter. “You were in Manhattan when the aliens poured forth from the sky.”

“Led by a douchebag with whom I am already acquainted,” she agrees, smiling to the waiter and ordering a sweet white. “I’m okay, Gramps. Jane and me hid in her bunker and watched like, The West Wing on DVD because we couldn’t get cell coverage. We had snacks. We saw no carnage, except the aftermath.”

And what an aftermath. Tony drives her crazy, but he’s a good guy under all the bullshit, and he adores Pepper and is Rhodey’s soulmate, so obviously he’s not  _ that  _ annoying or stupid. It had scared her shitless to see videos of him clinging to that big fucking rocket like a bug on a windshield. Pepper had cried down the phone, once cell coverage was finally restored, and that is something Darcy never wants to experience again, thanks.

“You’re not fine, and we will discuss it later,” Gramps says, wearing both his beret and one of his silk cravats, which means he’s stressed to the gills. “Will Doctor Foster be joining us?”

“She’s talking astrophysics with Thor,” Darcy says, shrugging. “Normally, that would be a euphemism, but with Jane, it is not. It is super, duper not.”

Uncle Jim laughs at that, in his usual subtle way - he’s got a soft, quiet laugh, quieter even than his soft voice, and Darcy’s always loved it because it’s so rare, which makes it feel more special.

Darcy’s mom was an only child, and her dad was a loudmouth foster kid who bounced around the system until he aged out and got himself a swimming scholarship, so she doesn’t really have any family except Gramps and Grandma and the Howlies. Well, she has Happy and Pepper now, she’s pretty sure, and she has a horrible feeling that she has Tony, too, whether she likes it or not.

Does that mean she gets Rhodey? And if so, does that make her crush weird?

But that’s not the point. The point is, the extended Howlie Clan is her family, and seeing Gramps fit to bust a gut and Uncle Jim chewing his nicotine gum like it’s going out of style has her on edge. She’s never seen them so obviously tense before, and she hopes to shit that Grandma and Aunt Nadia aren’t much longer. 

“So,” she says. “Your good buddy is alive. How crazy is that?”

Gramps gives her his best  _ withering  _ look, which has never worked on her, and Uncle Jim huffs a laugh. Jesus, they look so  _ old  _ right now, which is weird and scary on a whole other level. They’re all ancient, but they never seem it. Not to Darcy.

“I took the liberty of inviting him to drinks tomorrow night when I texted him your number,” she says cheerfully, ignoring Gramps’ apparent disdain with twenty years of practice. “He was like, majorly freaked, since he wasn’t told any of you were alive and kind of assumed that you were all  _ dead,  _ I guess, but he seemed super up for it. So that’s nice?”

“Darcy, kid,” Uncle Jim says, “your grandpa is about to bust a gut, so maybe ease up a little.”

She sips her wine and lets Gramps simmer down, which gives Grandma and Aunt Nadia a chance to arrive - which means ten minutes of Aunt Nadia, almost definitely the most beautiful woman to have ever lived, fussing over Darcy and telling her how much her new haircut suits her (Pepper’s stylist) and how cute her shoes are (an apology from Tony for her office being destroyed) and how well life in New York seems to be suiting her (true. Despite everything.).

“Pegs and Gabe are five minutes away, Peggy texted me,” Grandma says, tossing her scarf back over her shoulder and looking fully like a Golden Age movie star, while Gramps lifts a hand to call for a waiter - probably to ask for more seats, and if it weren’t for the black Amex sitting behind the counter, they’d be turned down.  “Any word from Jacques and Sabine?”

“Frenchie rang right before the kid got here,” Uncle Jim says, topping up Darcy’s wine on his way back from filling Aunt Nadia’s glass. “Fifteen minutes then, so about ten now.”

Gramps is having a very polite fight with the maitre d’, who seems outraged at the prospect of ruining the Feng Shui of the dining room or whatever, but who gives in when Gramps rubs his fingers together and implies the  _ shit  _ out of a huge-ass tip.

Uncle Duck - Frenchie - and Aunt Sabine arrive before Aunt Peggy and Uncle Gabe, which is typical, and chaos descends because Gramps and Uncle Jim aren’t even slightly subtle about checking Uncle Duck over for explosives, and Aunt Sabine takes umbrage with that.

She’s French. Darcy’s not one for stereotyping, but Sabine “I fought with the Resistance and supported myself by modelling for Dior and Balmain while they were at Lelong” Dernier is  _ so French,  _ and reacts to very, very English Gramps accordingly. Which means they fight like cats and dogs, except when Aunt Peggy makes them and Uncle Duck play nice so they can gang up on the Americans.

“Tell me, Darcy,” Aunt Nadia asks, loud and dry as Death Valley. “Which was worse - aliens in Manhattan, or the embarrassment going on at this table?”

Gramps and Aunt Sabine are suitably cowed by that, which gives Peggy and Gabe a chance to arrive. Peggy is regal in her wheelchair in a way Gramps never quite manages, and Gabe is just ridiculously handsome for a man of ninety-four, and from the second they arrive at the table, they’re in control. Doesn’t matter if the table is round, Peggy’s  _ always _ sitting at the head.

“I’ve invited Steve to have dinner with us,” Peggy announces. “He’ll be here for nine. Should give even Dum and Naomi time to get here.”

Silence greets this proclamation, until Darcy breaks it with undignified, snorting laughter that drives half a mouthful of wine out her nose.

“Oh, oh man,” she chokes out, “oh  _ man,  _ you all look like you’re about to  _ die.” _

“We’re nonagenarians, Darcy,” Gabe says cheerfully, sitting back with his arm round the back of Peggy’s chair. “We’ve survived this far, a good scare won’t kill us now.”

They get through three bottles of wine - Darcy always feels like a lightweight when she’s the only Junior Howlie at the table, because the OG and the wives are all hardcore when they get together, and she’s tipsy by the time the Dugans’ arrival is heralded by the sound the panicked maitre d’ trying to convince two very stubborn retired soldiers to please,  _ please _ stop smoking, it’s literally illegal in here.

Uncle Dum gives her a scratchy kiss on the cheek and ruffles her hair, and Aunt Naomi tips her face up by the chin and nods once, sharp and precise, before kissing the tip of her nose.

Darcy fucking  _ loves _ being the baby of the Howlie clan, great-grandchildren excluded.

“Why does English look like someone took a dump in his lap?” Uncle Dum stage-whispers to Peggy, who’s already rolling her eyes. “Did Darcy announce that she’s getting married?”

_ “Hardly, _ ” Gramps says, ice-cold and quelling. “Peggy is the one who made the unfortunate announcement, Timothy. Didn’t you,  _ Margaret?” _

“Yes,  _ James _ , I did,” Peggy says cheerfully, knocking back the rest of her wine with a grin that makes Gramps squirm. “I announced that Steve would be joining us for dinner tonight, and-”

“Hey, guys.”

 

*

 

Natasha sent Clint clothes shopping with him, on the understanding that Clint was more likely to be gentle and find a middle ground than Nat herself would have been.

Steve likes the suit they found - it’s much simpler and narrower fitting than what he would’ve worn Before, but the cloth is soft and he can go without a tie, which is a good thing. He’s always hated wearing a tie.

Everyone at the table is staring at him wide-eyed, but only four of them look  _ hurt.  _ This is going to be even harder than he thought, because on top of seeing Peggy and Gabe (seeing them  _ married,  _ with  _ kids  _ and  _ grandkids) _ he’s got to see Monty and Jim and Dum and Frenchie, and their wives, and… Someone he hopes very much is  _ not _ one of their wives, because she is  _ far  _ too young for that.

“Steven,” Peggy says, and from the softness of her eyes he can tell she’s feeling sorry for him, but that even the shock of his return isn’t going to undo whatever grieving and moving on she did. “Come. Sit here, with Darcy and me.”

Darcy is the youngest person at the table, with a long nose and a gap between her front teeth that halfway reminds Steve of Becky Barnes, until she smiles properly and he’s too charmed to do anything beyond smiling back. 

“Darcy is Monty’s granddaughter,” Dum Dum hollers across the table, chewing on the end of one of his foul cigars but not smoking it. “Hands where we can see ‘em, Rogers.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Steve says without thinking, and they all go tense for a heartbeat. “Listen, fellas-”

“You did a very noble, very  _ stupid  _ thing, Steve,” Monty says, face tense and eyes razor-sharp. “And while it may be just last week for you, we’d all made our peace with your sacrifice. We’d all grieved - and now, it seems, we didn’t even need to do so!”

_ “Gramps, _ ” the girl, Darcy, hisses out the side of her mouth. “Take off your asshole hat, dude, it doesn’t suit you.”

Frenchie sniggers into his glass at that, and Steve realises that the four women he hasn’t been introduced to, the  _ wives of his friends,  _ are all biting down on smiles. Dum Dum looks like he wants to punch Steve in the face, but that’s just Dum’s general expression, and Jim is watching him like… well, Jim’s always been hard to read. Peggy and Gabe, at least, look thrilled to see him, which just leaves Monty.

Who is much, much angrier than he should be.

“Monty-”

“I need a moment,” Monty says. “If you would, darling?”

The gorgeous lady sitting between Monty and Darcy leans over to shake Steve’s hand with a smile, winking one big, dark blue eye when Monty can’t see.

“Emeline Falsworth,” she says. “Lovely to finally meet you, Captain Rogers.”

“Just Steve, ma’am,” Steve says without thinking, and is rewarded by the kind of smile that must’ve stopped traffic in its day. “It’s a pleasure to meet the woman brave enough to tolerate Monty.”

Monty makes an outraged noise that would be hilarious if he didn’t look genuinely outraged, and wheels away to the curtained balcony Steve can see beyond the doors. Mrs. Falsworth follows him with a wave, and Peggy begins to laugh right as they leave. She still has the same dirty, overjoyed laugh she did Before, and she pats his hand so fondly, so  _ maternally,  _  that whatever romantic feelings were lingering in the face of the comfortable way Gabe has his arm around Peggy’s shoulders are wiped away.

It doesn’t even hurt, which is a relief. 

Things get easier now that Monty’s gone - Jim cracks one of his disarmingly deadpan jokes, Steve is introduced to Nadia, Naomi, and Sabine (as in,  _ Sabine Pelletier, _ who’d starred in some of those risqué skits to raise money for the Resistance, Frenchie had been crazy for her during the War but he’d been convinced she didn’t even know who he was, and now they were  _ married,  _ they had two kids and five grandkids and their daughter was a designer for Balmain, which was  _ crazy) _ . He was shown a gallery’s worth of photos, the quality of which kept taking him by surprise, and he tried very hard not to glance sidelong at Darcy (Falsworth?) every time there was a lull in the conversation.

Monty and Mrs. Falsworth came back after maybe half an hour, and Monty pulls himself to a stop right by Steve’s chair.

“For reasons I will not disclose,” he says, eyes flicking to Darcy and away, “I’m going to hit you as hard as my arthritic hands will allow. You are not going to hit me back, because I am very old, and very brittle. Understood?”

Any damage Monty manages to inflict’ll heal up in a few minutes anyway, so Steve figures he has nothing to lose.

“Sure, I guess,” he says. “I figure I kind of owe you fellas a few free punches.”

“Gramps, don’t,” Darcy warns, but Mrs. Falsworth quiets her with a hand to her wrist. 

Monty punches him hard in the eye while he’s watching Mrs. Falsworth, much to the delight of the boys - the wives holler, too, and they laugh even harder when Steve calls for two ice packs, one for his eye and one for Monty’s bruised knuckles.

“Forgot you wear a signet ring,” he says while Monty’s settling back at the table, and gets a smile for his efforts. “Shit, how’d you manage a punch like that with a stance like that?”

“He channels all his imperialistic rage into every outburst,” Darcy confides, eyes wide and hands spread like a showgirl. “He can’t help it, he’s just so  _ English.” _

Sabine and Frenchie raise their glasses from across the table, but Steve only registers it out of the corner of his eye.

Because Darcy’s right wrist is bare, except for the bright, royal blue digits written into her skin.

_ 07.04.1918 _

His eyes skid across to Monty, who’s gone all pale and tight again.

“I might be wrong,” Steve says, “but I think your granddaughter is the one with the right to punch me right now.”

His eyes have gone back to her wrist, and Darcy has noticed.

“You’re shitting me,” she says, seizing his right hand and turning it over, peering down at his wrist - squinting, as if she ought to be wearing glasses. 

_ 12.13.1988 _

“You’re  _ shitting  _ me!” she says, shaking his arm. “You?  _ Captain fucking America?!” _

“Hi,” he says. “Call me Steve.”


End file.
